


Where The Shadows Lie

by Peter Hale (RyloKen)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Attempted Filicide, Attempted Prolicide, Bad Parenting, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Claudia Loses Her Shit Guys, Dark fic, Descent into Madness, Fear, Fight or Flight, Found Family, Gen, I'm not kidding, So Does The Nogitsune, Stiles Stilinski Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, attempted child murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:38:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyloKen/pseuds/Peter%20Hale
Summary: There’s a place in the woods that not even the light dares to shine upon.Parents speak of it to their small children, weaving tales of woe and caution, of monsters in the shadows waiting to lure them in, of whispers on the winds that promise much but take more.They warn never to go there, to stay away, to stay safe.They warn, but Stiles doesn’t listen.





	Where The Shadows Lie

  _Darkness is sinking me_  
_Commanding my soul_  
_I am under the surface_  
_Where the blackness burns beneath_

_[Deep End - Ruelle](https://youtu.be/6C3ND1nitRs)_

 

There’s a place in the woods that not even the light dares to shine upon.

Parents speak of it to their small children, weaving tales of woe and caution, of monsters in the shadows waiting to lure them in, of whispers on the winds that promise much but take more.

They warn never to go there, to stay away, to stay safe.

They warn, but Stiles doesn’t listen.

 

 

He’s only a boy when true fear seeps into his bones and lingers longer than the nightmares ever do.

It’s day, the sun high and shining and meant to protect, to keep safe; but the sun is a lie he learns to turn from, a promise he knows will never be kept.

She’s not his mother anymore.

The laughing lilt to her stories is gone, the gentle love of her touches turned harsh and cruel.

What was once there has left, whisked away by psychosis and sickness and demons behind her eyes that make his smiles appear twisted, his tears like rare jewels.

She claws for them where she once wiped them away, hoards them like so much gold beneath the mountain of her madness.

He hides away beneath his bed and it isn’t the sunshine that finds him and holds him, it’s the shadows, the cool touch of dark that curls about his battered body and welcomes him home.

He’s safe, for a time, enough at least to close his eyes and dream of a tree and the warm press of silken fur against his side.

 

 

Home becomes dangerous and his young mind no longer sees it as the safe haven it should be.

Warmth has gone from his heart; fear has settled in to call his body its own.

He shakes with it, eyes wide as he watches the light beneath the door, watches it shift and shudder, disappear and reform around shadows that don’t belong.

Fingernails scrape down the wood of his door, disjointed and jerking, keeping him from finding the peace a boy should when the moon rises to lull all to sleep.

The shadows within the light shift, grow bigger, draw closer.

The nails turn to claws, dig deeper; he begins to shake and the tears that have brimmed his dark lashes spill and stain his pillow.

The door handle shudders, jumps, twists enough that his heart stops beating.

He holds his breath and presses fingers into the purples lining his sides, hidden away beneath layers as secrets kept between the lost son and the gone mother.

The door doesn’t open, but the boy doesn’t sleep.

 

 

It’s not until the taste of water on his breath becomes more than choked down tears that he sees the monster wearing his mother’s face.

His father tells him that she doesn’t mean it, that she’s not well but loves him still.

_Doesn’t mean it._

Her eyes tell another story, lit up as they always are by hatred and disgust and a promise of more.

More pain.

More purples to paint pictures on his pale skin.

More water for his lungs to drink down and drown in.

His father isn’t home when she drags him to the bathroom, away as he always is to protect everyone else from themselves and not the little boy who needs him most.

The monsters aren’t in the streets haunting others.

They’re in his home, forcing his son underwater and frothing at the mouth with hysterical laughter as he thrashes and sucks down an ocean.

Blood forms under his nails as he claws at her, as he screams beneath the contained waves and is dragged down, down, _down_ by icy fingers in his chest, by icier ones about his throat.

He sees nothing beyond the distorted haze of her grin, teeth on show and lips painted pretty pink.

She was beautiful once.

But beauty is a mask for danger.

He starts to grow weaker, starts to grow cold.

It might be luck that pulls him to the surface, or it might be the shadows that hold him when he hides beneath his bed just to know a little rest and respite.

She slips in her attack, staggers, and it’s enough to bring him above the waters edge, enough to give him breath to fill his throbbing lungs with.

It’s enough.

Her screams follow him as he stumbles, as he slip-slides down the wooden hall with his pajamas clinging closely to his coltish limbs.

His head throbs when she grabs him, when her claws dig deep into his scalp and yank harshly at his hair.

His tears leave him blinded as he goes down, as she follows with a screech and goes again for his neck.

She opens up lines along his skin, cuts into his face and nearly blinds him.

The blood turns his vision red.

He becomes a fish out of water, terrified, suffocating, thrashing.

They tumble, down and down the stairs and into the landings wall.

He hears a crack, hears her wailing.

He scrambles away from her, stops enough to see her flailing, broken leg splattering blood behind her as she drags herself after him, determined even in her incapacity to end him.

Tears well and spill and his fingers curl in his soaking shirt as he calls out to who she was.

But who she was is gone and who she is wants his blood.

She wants to kill him, and so he runs.

 

 

There’s a place in the woods that not even the light dares to shine upon.

Parents speak of it to their small children, weaving tales of woe and caution, of monsters in the shadows waiting to lure them in, of whispers on the winds that promise much but take more.

They warn never to go there, to stay away, to stay safe.

They warn, but Stiles doesn’t listen.

He has nowhere else to go.

 

 

The woods, the Preserve; trees as old and tall as time, his mother once told him.

His mother isn’t his mother anymore.

And Stiles isn’t afraid of wood and leaves and the lush moss and dirt that cushions the frantic stumbling of every step he takes further from home.

He can feel her, the ghost of her breathing down his neck as he runs, as he trips his way through the shadows cut up by sunlit greenery.

Tears keep him half blind, fear keeps him moving.

The cuts upon his throat burn, the ones around his eyes bleed.

His sobs echo in his ears but no further; the Preserve protects his secret wandering, a wolf at his back to guard his tracks.

He runs, never knowing where or why but always onward.

Something draws him deeper.

Something calls.

_This way, Stiles._

_Hurry._

He whimpers, but it’s not fear of the voice he feels as he turns, as he looks over his shoulder and sees what isn’t really there.

It becomes more than a whisper in the beams of light, becomes limbs akimbo, pale and broken, twisting one over the other and drawing closer.

His lungs seize around a scream and he turns back, sprints as fast as his sopping clothes will let him.

He can hear her.

He can feel her.

Nails scrape down the back of his neck, spiders’ legs upon the hairs there that stand on end and warn him not to turn, not to fall.

She’ll have him.

She’ll take him to the ground.

She’ll finish him.

He breaks into a clearing with terror building, a tight grip around his thundering heart.

He’s tormented, a frightened fox running from a feral mutt.

His heart leaps and flails as he himself does.

Something is watching, waiting.

Something is silent.

He turns in circles, looking for the monster wearing his mothers face but it’s gone.

She’s gone.

His mind reels and he lets the tears spill as he curls into a ball beside a tree grown ragged and gnarled.

The shadows have him.

The shadows want him.

Don’t go into them, they all say, but he’s not safe anywhere else.

Stiles gulps down air, lungs aching with every breath as his heart skips and sputters and his mind spins and grows hazed.

_Calm now, little kit._

It speaks inside him, a whisper, a soothing touch to the nightmare he’s living.

It’s the shadows beneath his bed, the cold press of protection in the dark.

It’s home.

He cries freely, then, and accepts what he’s offered there in a forbidden place as his heart calms and his lungs settle and his mind stops fraying around the edges.

It’s promise enough.

He sleeps, eyes red rimmed and stained, in the shadows of an ancient tree, and doesn’t stir at the ghostly press of silken fur along his spine.

 

 

The moon is a silver kiss in the sky when he wakes.

His body aches, cold as it is on the forest floor in naught but pajamas frosted over by the sinking of the sun.

His hands shake, pale and stained beneath the nails with blood and dirt.

He studies them, and feels tears lick at the backs of his eyes as dread eats away at his belly.

His mother’s blood.

He weeps, a small child left alone to the beast that howled for his death by a father who buried his head in the sand and refused to see.

He is alone.

_No._

_Not alone._

_Not anymore._

The clearing echoes softly with the sound of his sniffling and nothing else.

The whispers are everywhere and nowhere, inside and out.

He hears them clear as words shouted across a small room and yet there’s no sound to them.

The shadows try to form, try to be.

He blinks, curiosity swelling, banking.

His voice is shaky when he calls out, when he speaks, and the shadows try harder, curl and writhe.

There’s pain there, rage, betrayal, a fear that’s kept locked and hidden behind hunger, hunger for retribution.

He sniffles again and stumbles to his feet, a newborn deer with too many limbs and too little coordination.

He steps forward, again, again, deeper into the darkness.

Warmth shouldn’t bloom yet it does.

He feels it tremble inside him, just as curious, just as cautious beneath the hope.

They’ve both been hurt.

They’ve both been betrayed.

They’ve both been left to rot.

He finds it, locked away beneath a root with dirt and dust dulling the shine of its star-fire eyes.

The jar is nothing remarkable, but the _Will_ that’s placed within the slowly shifting sands that make up the glass, the _Determination_ that keeps the gilded lid firmly in place, the _Lie_ –

He twists the lid without thought, without question, and undoes a Spell cast an age ago.

The shadows come alive, twist and twist and dance into themselves.

They writhe about him, and shadows become thicker, darker, more.

He follows the shine of those liquid eyes, silver suns in the shade, up and up, up, _up_ , until the spirit is standing tall and strong before him with its tails spread and floating free upon the winds like silk beneath the sea.

He wonders if, when he’s older, when he can understand what he’s done, if he’ll regret this.

He doesn’t think so.

The shadows solidify, strengthen.

The sting goes from the cuts upon his face, from the gouges at his throat.

Purples and blues lift from his skin and leave it shining in the moonlight, pale and clear of the abuse he’s kept hidden from a father who didn’t want to know.

They stare at each other, spirit and boy, both lost and alone and with promises upon their lips.

He smiles, and the grin is fox-like, playful, a trap, and the shadow smiles back.

_Let me in, Stiles._

And so he does.

 

 

There’s a place in the woods that not even the light dares to shine upon.

Parents speak of it to their small children, weaving tales of woe and caution, of monsters in the shadows waiting to lure them in, of whispers on the winds that promise much but take more.

They warn never to go there, to stay away, to stay safe.

They warn, but they needn’t bother, for the threat no longer lingers in the woods, locked away beneath a tree as old as old can be.

They needn’t warn of old trees and lost shadows, not when they should be speaking warnings of the monster-mother lost in her madness and the night she died with screams swallowed whole by the waves of an ocean brought to land just for her.

They warn of old trees and lost shadows, but the trees are harmless and the shadows empty.

If they knew, really knew, they wouldn’t warn their children of such silly things.

No, they would warn them of the boy with the fox in his smile and its fire in his amber eyes, of the whispers that kiss the wind when he’s about and the shadows that curl within his own, alive with something old, something Other.

If they knew, they’d warn their young not to trust the fox, the trickster.

And they’d be right.

But they don’t know, and they don’t warn, and somewhere in the night, a lost boy laughs along with the fox that calls his shadow home.


End file.
